Since almost everyone has conducted at least one of their interviews, Emily and I thought it would be beneficial to share with each other our experiences. How did the interview process go overall? What was your strategy/approach to conducting the interview? Did you rely on a structured process or a spontaneous one? What were the advantage/disadvantages of the way you conducted your interview? Was there anything you wish you could have done differently? Overall, did you enjoy this experience or not?
Sean: I enjoyed both my interviews a lot. I thought the people Matt and I interviewed live extremely interesting and enjoyable lives. Matt and I chose to take a more spontaneous approach to our interviews where we followed the topics that were brought up through our conversation. We used the question sheet as a guide and only referred to it when there was no direction to the current conversation. I think this worked out well because the interviewees felt like they were actually having a conversation as opposed to being asked just questions. This helped create rapport and made them feel more comfortable. There were a few questions that Matt and I thought of after the interview that we would have liked to have asked them, but overall I felt like we did a great job and got a lot of wonderful information.
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The interviews Cayla and I conducted went well for the most part. Our first interviewee was somewhat withdrawn and reluctant to talk about his personal experiences. He mostly gave us a rundown of PAH’s history rather than his own, despite our questions relating solely to him. Because he was not as excited to talk as we might have hoped, we had to ask several leading questions rather than simply have a conversation with him. However, when we asked him what he’s learned from working with PAH, he was brought to tears thinking about stories he’s heard from clients. After that, he got a bit more nervous and closed down. It was harder to get much out of him after that, even though we knew there was a story behind the tears.
ReplyDeleteOur second interviewee was much more excited to talk about his experiences – so excited that he talked for almost two hours. With him, we only had to ask him a couple questions, and each would lead to a half hour conversation. With him, our interview was much more spontaneous. We definitely learned a lot about him and his work, but he was apt to go into side stories, which took time away from questions we really wanted to hear about. However, I think this was the best way we could have done the interview because we learned what he was passionate about, which will hopefully lead to a more interesting story.
It was very interesting to hear about the unceasing dedication both men had to the organization, and I can only hope I’ll one day be as passionate about something as they are.
For the interviews that Jenna and I conducted, both of our interviewees were very keen on talking. Their passion was very evident during our conversations. However, they did tend to get off-topic sometimes. In that case, we would have to steer them back to the question at hand. In fact, one of our interviewees actually forgot the question while he was talking. However, what he was talking about was actually very pertinent to the conversation. It was easy to just let the conversation flow.
ReplyDeleteWe started out very structured, and I would say that we kept to that structure throughout the interview. However, inside the structure of the interview, we also asked a bunch of follow-up questions to delve deeper. For me, the hardest part was trying to find that personal story because both of our interviewees were board members. They liked talking about the history of Project Angel Heart, but we had to probe to get the inside story.
For me, doing both interviews back to back in a 4 hour time period helped a lot. After the first one, we were better prepared for the second one. We also knew more of what we wanted to ask and where the conversation might go. It was also easy to draw comparisons between both interviews. I was able to see the different perspectives side-by-side.
Kelly and I conducted one interview. It was with a man named Charles. He founded Project Angel Heart. Initially both Kelly and I were very nervous for the interview. He lives in California so we had to conduct the interview via phone. For this reason, there were also many logistical issues. First, we had the basic issue of finding a time that worked for everybody. Next, we had to figure out how to record the call but a lady from Project Angel Heart helped us out.
ReplyDeleteIt turned out our fears for the interview were completely unwarranted. Charles answered the phone was right away from friendly and open. We barely asked him a question and he was content to talk, without stopping, for about fifteen minutes. After he told us his initially story, we started asking him more questions. We went into the interview with very few plans for questions and how we wanted it to flow. We had some basic ideas and the questions provided by the class. Overall, this method worked really well for us. Charles didn't seem to mind when some of our questions were out of order, and it allowed us to try and make the interview like more of a conversation.
Jenn and I have done one of our interviews, as she said. I was really nervous for the interview, especially because it was on the phone and so I anticipated that it would be hard to get a read on the interviewee, Charles. But everything went very smoothly, and it was really much easier than I had thought. We didn’t plan much for the interview, and the game plan was more just to let things flow and see where the conversation took us. The conversation flowed well, and Jenn and I really just asked clarifying questions or questions to lead Charles to give us more information on a topic.
ReplyDeleteCharles shared with us that he had problems with drugs and alcohol before he came out, and these issues had a lot to do with his work with PAH. I thought that this might be a touchy subject and was a little wary to ask him more about it, but thought it would be good material for the paper. But he was very open about everything and didn’t mind us asking at all. He was really very easy to interview and had a wonderfully interesting story to tell. I actually enjoyed interviewing him and the process as a whole went very well.
I was kind of upset because one of our interviews was at 8 o'clock in the morning. I got over it though, and I felt that the morning interview went very smoothly. Sean and I got along really well with Jon Emanuel, the executive chef at Angel Heart. We were able to establish commonalities with Mr. Emanuel and I feel that really helped our interview. I mentioned that Sean was in DU grilling society and Mr. Emanuel immediately took to that, and was more open and friendly (even though he was very friendly to start) afterward. We took a spontaneous approach and I felt that helped us in our interview because we were able to ask questions on tangents that got us very solid information.
ReplyDeleteOur second interview went smoothly as well, but maybe not quite as much as the first. We were not able to establish ourselves the same way we had in our first interview but we were still able to obtain good information throughout the course of the interview. The second interview was much more emotional than the first, so that was area in which Sean and I had to change our approach.
I thought our interviews went well. David and Erin were both very kind and accommodating. We didn’t really have a strategy, rather, Steffi and I went into it knowing basically what we wanted to get out of the interview and went from here. During the interview we took turns asking questions, trying to riff off of what the other person was asking and the information our interviewee gave us. With an idea of what kind of information we wanted to get, we steered the conversation in that direction. The process was definitely much more spontaneous. I think that by doing this, we managed to create an informal rapport both by building it with the interviewee and by demonstrating it between ourselves. Even when we got visibly stuck in the process, we believe that being able to see our mistakes let the interviewees know that we aren’t necessarily experienced with this kind of thing. I think it urged them to give us more information than they would perhaps give to a professional newspaper or magazine. The disadvantage to this was that we could have glossed over an important point or missed something crucial because we were trying to come up with our next question and keep the big picture in mind. I think we thought that if we ask all the right questions, we would then be able to go back and listen to the recordings to gather any info we might have missed. Overall, I thought it was an enjoyable experience, but it was also a time-consuming one.
ReplyDeleteThe interviews were a new experience for me. I am very glad we did them in pairs, as going to a stranger’s house alone would have been slightly intimidating. Also, it was helpful to have two minds working together to come up with questions and take different perspectives on the interviews. Since it was hard to anticipate beforehand how the interviews would go, we took a spontaneous approach using the questions as an outline and pursuing ideas we thought might be of interest. Overall I think this approach worked well.
ReplyDeleteIn the middle of our first interview, the guy got very emotional and started crying as he remembered something. He excused himself and left the room, and unfortunately I felt like he never really opened up again after that. There was something there that would have made a very interesting story, but he did not feel comfortable telling us about it so we did not probe. The second interview lasted almost 2 hours, but he was a very interesting guy and had a lot of stories to tell. I enjoyed going off campus and venturing into the Denver community to hear the stories of two truly dedicated and nice people.
Kathryn and I agreed to use a mostly spontaneous approach to the interview questions - we had one or two questions we wanted to start with and kept the list of suggested questions on hand in case we could not come up with a good connecting question, but usually we just let the conversation flow from one question to the next. Both of our interviewees liked to talk a lot and had very interesting things to say, so we did not have to work too hard to keep the conversation going. We did occasionally have to work to keep the conversation on topic, however. Both of our interviewees would talk for long periods of time, working their way to a topic completely unrelated to the question. Ususally this information was still relevant, however, so we allowed these moments to occur.
ReplyDeleteEach of our interviews were just under an hour, and we did them in one afternoon with a quick lunch break in between. I believe that this schedule was effective - we were able to compare and contrast the interviews easily and the first interview helped to prepare us for the second. We found that about an hour was a good amount of time. With Dr. Thrun, we covered most of the questions we wanted to ask and continued conversing easily, coming to a natural stop right around that time. At one point during Rev. Halverstadt's interview, there was a lull in the conversation and neither Kathryn nor I could come up with something to ask right away. I looked at the time, saw that we had only been working for 20 minutes and panicked for a moment. Luckily, Kathryn asked another question, the conversation picked up again, and we came to a natural stop just under an hour.
Both of our interviewees were board members and really enjoyed talking about the history and current events of the organization. Although this information was valuable, we were also interested in getting more personal stories. Even with futher probing, I feel like we did not get too much of a personal account from either interviewee. This left the whole conversation feeling a bit impersonal. Although we learned a great deal about PAH itself, I do not feel that we really got a deep look at specific people within the organization. I am a little concerned about how this will affect our writing process for the profiles, but I am sure we will be able to work something out. Overall, I enjoyed meeting two wonderful men with a heart for service and spending some time hearing what they had to say.
Emily and I conducted both on our interviews last Wednesday afternoon.
ReplyDeleteBoth of the interviews went well. Our first interviewee (Bev Booth) was shy, but very eager to tell us about Project Angel Heart. So,we had to ask her specific questions and the conversation did not lead itself. In spite of this, though, I still think the interview went well. Bev was so nice, and very willing to share, and because we got to ask specific questions, I think Emily and I got exactly the kind of information we wanted.
The second interviewee, Jeffery, was a client and board member. At the first prompting, Jeffery started talking and continued to talk for about 45 minutes(with brief interludes of clarification questions from us) and when he was done, he had answered every question Emily and I could ask, basically. So, we spent about 5 minutes grappling to find another question before finally giving up and thanking him. Jeffery's interview, though not exactly a traditional interview, was amazing. He told us his story as an AIDS patient and his involvement with Project Angel Heart so willingly that questions on our end were almost superfluous.
Overall, I think both interviews went well, and I am very excited to write the histories of the stories we heard.
Our interviews went very well. Our first was the driver, Bob, who gave us insight about how Project Angel Heart has grown over the years and what it's like to deliver meals. His interview began with just him telling his story, and maybe ten minutes in we began to ask him questions. He had a lot to say, and it was all very interesting.
ReplyDeleteOur interview of Sandy also went very well. She is a program director, so she explained what her job entailed and how she got into Project Angel Heart. She has been working for non-profits for a while and plans to continue to do so.
Both interviews lasted about 45 minutes. They are taking some time to transcribe, but overall the project and interviews have been interesting and engaging.
As Zach and I wrote last week, we completed both of the interviews two Fridays ago. Both went well because both Erin and David were very open to sharing their stories. We followed a free flowing and unconstructed path with our questions. I think this helped the interviews seem less formal which made the interviewees more comfortable. It also let them know that we really were paying attention to what they were saying.
ReplyDeleteIf I had to choose one, the interview with Erin was easier. Since she is the executive director of Project Angel Heart and was the one who brought the idea for this project to Geoffrey she knew exactly what information she we were looking for. Some of her responses did seem rather scripted though, as if she had planned what she was going to say before the interview even started.
Our major problem now is that we lost one of the recordings so we don’t have the recording of David’s interview. His interview was the second one that we did and we decided not to take notes during it because notes weren’t helpful for the first one. Because of that, Zach and I had to reconstruct the interview from memory and without a transcript. I emailed David to get some quotes for the piece but it will still be a challenge without the original material.
I was, in all honesty, pretty nervous about conducting interviews last Wednesday with Mary Kate, but I do have to say that overall, they went very well.
ReplyDeleteWe scheduled both our intervews for one day. First, we met with Bev, a long-time kitchen volunteer, in Penrose library. Bev was nicer and easier to talk to than I had imagined she would be. I wondered, before beginning the interview, how it would be possible to make a simple list of questions extend into an hour-long conversation. Clearly, I needn't have worried : Bev had many stories to tell, and we spoke easily with her for about an hour.
After that, we hopped on the light rail downtown, then walked five blocks to meet Jeffrey, a former Project Angel Heart recipient and current member of its board of directors. Jeffrey, who had been diagnosed with HIV in the early 90s, had a fascinating story to tell -- I really enjoyed talking with him and I look forward to writing his oral history!
The interview process actually went really well. I was more nervous for our second interview with Sandy than I was with Bob because I feel like Sandy's interview was going to be more formal. I tried to go in with a set of questions because I wanted to have someplace to start and I didn't want to be faltering while we were doing the interview. While the actual interview was going on with Sandy, I tried to be spontaneous and to ask questions related to what she had said. I think the interview flowed pretty well and it went well. The interview with Bob was kind of the same way. He repeated himself quite a bit but he was still interesting to listen to and it was comfortable with him. Leah was leading this interview but I tried to throw in some questions when she got stuck or if I thought something could be expanded on. I would say overall I enjoyed it because it gave different perspectives on the history of Project Angel Heart but it still gave the history of it. This was a good experience to have to be able to get a history of the organization through a more personal point of view.
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